ISTE Standards v. My School

Overall, I feel that my school is probably pretty fair in regards to meeting the ISTE standards and its current steps towards increasing our standings in those standards.  On average, I would say that we are "initiating" or "approaching" in most categories, but that we do have some "meets" going on as well.  Rather than going into specifics I'll lightly touch on what we are currently doing in the school to meet the ISTE standards and leave it at that.


1. Shared Vision - we do very well at communicating, whether through e-mails, staff development, or committees (we have SIT Team, Committees and PLCs all going on).  The overall concept is of progressing towards more educational technology for Student Centered/Project based learning.


2. Empowered Leaders - We have those!!!


3. Implementation Planning - we do implement our School Improvement Plan, as well as topics that we receive Professional Development on.


4. Consistent and Adequate Funding - we have made attempts to get more technology in the classroom.  When the budget has been available the technology has come; when the technology hasn't been available it has waited.


5. Equitable Access - Our technology at the moment is more first come first serve, which does work to some extent in regards to the teachers who want to use it just have to budget their time in order to get the access.  You might not get it on the day you want it, but as long as you wait a day or two it would be helpful.


6. Skilled Personnel - We have this too!


7. Ongoing Professional Learning - we have this available for all teachers that are wanting to use it.  Whether it is through the teaching and learning conference in the summer or Professional Development during planning periods during the School year; it is always going on and available for students to attend.


8. Technical Support - our TSS person as well as our Sys-Op are both wonderful!!! We can also help each other out should it be a quick issue that needs fast trouble shooting.


9. Curriculum Framework - Our standards do associate with digital age learning and work;  we try to tie in our lessons with life skills or current issues going on in the world and why we would need (Relevance)


10. Student-Centered Learning - I think this is one of the categories in which we are still progressing.  We have days that that we are really on top of this category and then days that maybe not as much.  But just like students are their to learn, teachers are life long learners so there's always room for more development and improvement


11. Assessment and Evaluation - We currently have common assessments going on whether it is by unit or benchmark.  I think there is still room for improvement in regards to generating the data and compiling that for further evaluation.


12. Engaged Communities - This is probably one is which we can improve further.  We do get community involvement in regards to many things (sports, organizations, etc.).  I don't know that we have a lot of community engagement about technology, but again we are a work in continuous process.


13. Support Policies - We do set up what are expectations are and hold teachers, parents, students, etc. accountable to those expectations. 


14. Supportive External Context - We do have some external context going on in our school, for some our PLN's are probably developing further than others, but it will be like a chain system where we are all linked together so after one goes the rest may slowly follow, but there will be some influence in following.


We are good and well on our way!

This Day in History for the iPad

Well it's over I may be in love for Bell Ringers or closings... There is an App for the iPad that is "This Day in History"  I happened upon it because another teacher had posted that it was an app worth checking out and even though I might not have people reading this blog quite yet, if you are a Social Studies teacher it might be worth your while.  First, you can look ahead in days so if you wanted to create a Bell Ringer Question(s) and then let each group look at a different person and write a blurp on them and then share; at the moment I think that's a good idea.  If you disagree or have another, please share!  It is a free app as well which makes it ever better.


Other apps I'm currently deciding on:


- Smithsonian App - lets you watch videos (compare to United Streaming/Discovery)


- Mindomo - at the moment I'm liking the free aspect and it has seemed relatively easy to use (spent about ten minutes making a quick Web Diagram of leaders of the Civil Rights Movement) - I haven't figured out how to change colors, etc. yet.... give me time I will learn


- Yahoo Market Dash - I must admit I downloaded it because of another blog, but haven't opened it yet and might not open it at the moment - I'm thinking it will be good for Economics or for the Great Depression for U.S. History


- Ink flow - I like that you can grab, change the size, and move parts of your text to other areas, not in love with my writing in the program though; also in order to have multiple colors you have to pay for it, but for writing quick ideas down (brainstorming) for my students for a project I'm not opposed completely


K That's all for now... Thanks for reading

Pinnacle Day One

Greetings Ya'll!  This is my new blog :) In this blog I'm going to be posting various things that I am learning through my experiences.  So to introduce myself I did a Prezi (because I LOVE Prezi - think power point that can zoom about), but my fellow people were using other applications.  


So here is a little of marvy-ness that I have already learned about and am going to post:

• Dropbox - Definitively going to be looking into this - I think it might be similar to drop.io which disappeared, but don't quote me and look back later and I'll let you know
• Blogger - Just created mine :)
• Animoto - Very intriguing for a presentation and going to be playing with it later when I have time
• Glogster - Marvy type of pin board set up where you can post things

Well that's all for now I have more to do for my assignment, but this is my official first post YAY!!!